Relational Aesthetics coined by Nicolas Bourriaud

Robert Jackson // Mar 1st 2007 at 9:02 pm You’ve highlighted the same problem the art world is facing right now. Relational Aesthetics (an art notion coined by Nicolas Bourriaud, inspired by Deleuze, Guattari and Massumi amongst others) is radically against representation and instead artworks are created with relations and networks in hindsight first, i.e Rirkrit Tiravanijia cooks a load of noodles in an exhibition gallery and serves them to visitors, the point being to show that the ‘art’ is basically conviviality pure and simple. another example Liam Gillick is quite happy for people to strand with there backs to his archiectural sculptures and not pay attention to them.

Relational Aesthetics like Deleuze and Guattari aims to present the artist as a Body without Organs, always in flux, collaborating with anyone he/she likes, not producing end products but as you say producing new meanings and relationships. The problem is that no-one ever questions these relationships properly, and the art world is in a slight state of empty empiricism. Would you say the task lies with Laclau as opposed to Baudrillaud? Laclau’s notion of the subject as being in flux and fixed at the same time means that such as with artists like Santiago Sierra, empiricism could achieve meaning through antagonism.